Robert Harley sure seems smitten, and he is the kind of experienced reviewer I have come to trust. Especially when he describes the sound the way he does. I am pretty sure the stabilizing bearing design he thinks nobody ever thought of is just a variation on what Mark Baker has been doing with Origin Live from well before the SA9. But whatever. Point is the sound he describes is the sound you want.
I especially like the integral phono leads. My experience is the extra RCA connections and expense of having to find a suitable phono interconnect make the integral lead the way to go. The phono cartridge puts out such a faint signal, the last thing you want is to run it through half a dozen extra connections before it even hits the phono stage.
I can vouch for Harley's comment about the arm being a huge factor. My experience was different but similar. The Graham 2.2 was a really fine arm. No complaints. Waited a long time to upgrade, just seemed like how much better could another arm be? Then the Origin Live Conqueror with its integrated phono lead showed me- it is in a whole other league!
That is the only suggestion I would make, see what you can learn about how SA9 compares with something like say a new Conqueror, or even better. You are in a price range where there are no bad arms. You are down to splitting hairs over just how much magic can you get. With pretty much all of them I think the answer is, "A lot!"
I especially like the integral phono leads. My experience is the extra RCA connections and expense of having to find a suitable phono interconnect make the integral lead the way to go. The phono cartridge puts out such a faint signal, the last thing you want is to run it through half a dozen extra connections before it even hits the phono stage.
I can vouch for Harley's comment about the arm being a huge factor. My experience was different but similar. The Graham 2.2 was a really fine arm. No complaints. Waited a long time to upgrade, just seemed like how much better could another arm be? Then the Origin Live Conqueror with its integrated phono lead showed me- it is in a whole other league!
That is the only suggestion I would make, see what you can learn about how SA9 compares with something like say a new Conqueror, or even better. You are in a price range where there are no bad arms. You are down to splitting hairs over just how much magic can you get. With pretty much all of them I think the answer is, "A lot!"